


Shelter

by Cards_Slash



Series: Sass Verse [6]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 02:29:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10401729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Mary had summed it up best when she knocked the lip of a whisky bottle against his beer and said, “you’ve got some kind of luck, Kenway.”(or, Edward's life is interrupted by Mama Maria showing up at his hotel door asking for favors he most certainly did not owe her.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> so on Sunday I was like: "should I write this thing or Edward?" and of course the answer was Edward and the original draft of this story was like 10k and now it's 50 pages long and I don't have any control over my own life. But I do love Edward.

Mary had summed it up best when she knocked the lip of a whisky bottle against his beer and said, “you’ve got some kind of luck, Kenway.” 

\--

But there he was, still holding the brush he’d meant to use on his hair, with the shirt he’d meant to put on hanging out of his mouth, thinking uncharitable thoughts about how people who had been given room keys should have had the decency to use them. His mind was _elsewhere_ , working out how Jenny had elected to go to England for college and how his son had given up his pursuit of the sea in favor of demanding a life on land.

(I just want friends, _Dad_ , Haytham said to him with sunburn on his tanned shoulders and his hair wild and windswept on the top deck of the yacht. I just want _a real home_.)

Edward was working through the sting of reasonable expectations and the reality of an era coming to a slow close or he might have taken a minute or three longer to think about it before he yanked open the hotel door. All the same, he opened the door with the intent to demand why someone was knocking, held it for a single half-breath: just long enough to take in the sight of Mama Maria in all her glory, and then he said: “No,” without remembering he was carrying a shirt in his mouth. It fell to the floor and he slapped the door shut all at the same time. The fabric dragged but the door slammed into the frame all the same. 

Except he was standing there with his fist around a brush and his shirt on the outside of his hotel room. There were exits—sure there were—like the balcony that faced the pool. He was a couple of floors up but that had never stopped him in the past. 

“I will not go away simply because you closed the door,” Mama Maria said through the door. Then she waited a beat, “while I would like to see my son again, I cannot imagine he would like to see me _here_.”

Edward had never (not once ever) hated a woman the way he hated Maria god-damn Auditore. (Not even Phyllis, not even her.) He drew a breath in and let it go out through his lips again, turned around and yanked the door open. There she was, the devil herself (with a smile), holding his shirt up so he could take it from her. “I can’t imagine that it’d be _me_ that would fare poorly in that situation.”

“Don’t be modest.” She did not invite herself in but stood in front of him without flinching. (That’s where Federico had gotten it from, that iron will of his, that fake-front of fearlessness.) “My son is superstitious. He always has been.”

“What do you want?”

Mama Maria’s placid smile flinched, “I want my children back.”

And he laughed at that. “I’m not your child, Maria.”

“No.” She said that agreeably enough. Like they had good times once, all those years that she put him out like a dog. There was fondness in the way she looked at him and it undermined the snake-like-hiss of her voice when she said, “but you are fucking one of them.” Her smile was vicious.

Edward had never been _smart_ (and this woman, oh hell, this woman had made sure he knew it), but he had learned a thing or two in his life. So he knew, long before she was going to work around to saying it: “you want me to help convince him to forgive you?”

“My daughter informed me that any communication would need to go through the appropriate channels and she then directed me a law firm. My son,” and here, she meant _Ezio_ , “let me know that regretfully, there could be no personal communication at this time. Federico hired a man to hang up the phone on me.”

“He didn’t hire anyone; he did that himself,” Edward said.

“I want my children back,” Maria said again. And for the very smallest of moments, in between one blink and the next, the façade cracked wide-open. There she was, that stupid girl from the photographs of his childhood. 

“Too fucking late,” Edward said.

Maria ran her tongue across her lips and sighed. “Then I at least want the opportunity to apologize, and to explain.”

Edward laughed at her. “No.”

That did not wound her, she only stood there and watched him a moment. “Can you remember,” she said, _very softly_ , “how we have come to be where we are now? Can you remember the moment that it changed? You and I are all that is left of that house. We are the only survivors; do you imagine that you are the only one who barely escaped with their life?”

“I remember the exact moment it changed. I was six fucking years old. Calvin gave me a cup of vodka and told me it was _vitamin_ water; _you_ found me crying in the kitchen with a hangover. I thought I was dying and you told me that I belonged in the dog house with the other dogs.” He threw the shirt over his shoulder. “I broke your son’s face and you looked me in the eyes and told me you’d cut my hands off if I touched Ezio. Don’t come to my door begging me for sympathy, Maria. You’ve used Federico to get what you want enough in life. I’m not helping you do it again.” He motioned down the hallway, “by all means, stand there. Wait for him. We’ll see what happens.”

\--

“Jaysus,” Mary said. She always said it—always exactly the same—but standing there in her bathing suit with the towel around her hips, it sounded sharper, more urgent, more pressing. Her hair was braided out of her face so he could see how her cheeks pinked when she was aggravated (or worried, or hurt). Her hands were in the space between her body and his face, like she wanted to grab him and stopped herself. “What are you going to tell him?”

Edward snorted at that. “Fuck her,” because he’d been thinking it on repeat since he called her five minutes ago, looking for any breath of sanity in the world. “Fuck her,” he said again (no louder).

Mary shifted her weight so she was leaning away from her and her hands fell back down to rest on her hips.

“I have to tell him,” Edward said.

“Yeah,” Mary agreed. Then she looked out through the open balcony door and sighed at the sound of the water splashing around in the pool. The too-loud voices of his children arguing (again, still) was clear enough to make out even as high up as they were. She rolled her eyes at them before she looked back at him. “Do you want me to take them out for a while?”

“No, he said he was bringing the kids because Cristina had an—appointment or something.” And he balled up his fist and pushed it against the glass. “Fuck her,” he hissed through his teeth.

\--

Federico arrived after lunch, about the time Jenny had promised to drown her brother in the toilet. Haytham had taken up a spot with his back against the glass door of the balcony with a pillow under his shoulders so he could shout: “I’m not on the balcony, you said I couldn’t be on the balcony, this isn’t the balcony,” as loud as possible. 

“Haytham,” Edward said after the sixth go-round of the same argument. And his son leveled him with a spiteful-mean-spirited glare that was so reminiscent of the mirror that Edward had to count to twenty before he said _anything_. “Find a new hobby,” is what he said.

“She’s leaving in two months, I got to get in all the shots I can.” And his stupid, pubescent son truly, honestly believed that. He picked himself up though, and grabbed the pillow he’d stolen off his bed. “You don’t have to take her side all the time.” He snarled the words as he went through the doorway to where his bed was and he threw himself onto it.

Federico came in between Edward speaking and Haytham storming off. He was standing there with the baby hugging his neck, Vittoria sucking on her thumb as she observed her inevitable future and Vincenzio clutching his DS in one hand and the stylus in the other saying, “what’s his problem?”

“Puberty,” Edward said.

“Gross,” Vincenzio said.

Federico didn’t look convinced about that as he set Pietro on the floor. The little boy ran to the glass window without pause, slapping both of his damp palms against it and screeching a long string of syllables that may have (or may not have been) an actual language. He looked like he was going to call the boy back but Jenny (who had agreed to babysit the young children, for money) tucked her phone into her shorts and opened the balcony door. 

“Pietro!” she said (like she actually liked him, like she hadn’t just threatened to drown her own brother) as she reached down to pick him up. He was a round-bellied toddler, with sticky fingers and his father’s unfortunate face. But he kissed her cheek with spit-soaked glee. “You guys want to go play in the game room?” She held her hand out for Vittoria to take.

Federico wrinkled up his forehead.

“Haytham!” Edward shouted.

His son came out wearing an ugly brown shirt (that he’d taken to wearing in protest, it seemed) and his sandals, stomping every step of the way. “I’m not a _child_ ,” was his protest. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Maybe you should have agreed to help then.” She picked up her bag before she scooted past Federico (still looking confused) and motioned Vincenzio to follow her. “Come on, they’ve got an air hockey table and I’ve got unlimited coins.” 

“Cool,” Vincenzio said.

“Dude,” Haytham said. “Don’t encourage her.” And like he was dying not to say it, “what’re you playing?” They disappeared in mid-conversation, Haytham as the caboose not even pretending to care about letting the door slam. 

When they were gone, the room was _silent_ , and Federico turned on his heels so his shoulders were against the wall opposite of where Edward was sitting on the arm of a chair. “I cannot imagine this is a bid to get sex,” he said.

“No,” Edward agreed.

“I just spoke with Ezio, he would have told me if something had happened to Claudia or Altair—”

“Your Mother showed up at my door asking me to convince you to forgive her,” Edward said. Because it was best done like ripping a bandage off. There was no sense in building up to the reveal when no amount of reassurance was going to make the point any easier to swallow. “I told her no.”

“Ah,” Federico said. He pushed his fists into his pockets and arched his back so his shoulders were rolled forward and his hips were pushed against the wall. For a moment, there was nothing but his face turned to look at the door and the blankness of his expression. When he closed his eyes, there was an undefinable flinch that smoothed out again when he opened them. “I assume she tried to the others first.”

“She said they wouldn’t speak to her.”

Federico just shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll have someone contact her. It’s stupid to draw it out any longer.”

But-that was _not_ what Edward expected to hear. “What?”

“It was inevitable,” Federico said with his hand waving the whole affair to the side. “She would have always come begging for forgiveness. Her money must be running out, or she’s discovered she’s lonely. I thought she’d break Ezio, and I wouldn’t have to—” In the center of that very rational, very sturdy statement, he punched the wall. The impact was like a crack, and there was blood on the wall and dripping off Federico’s knuckles. He kept still after, standing with his back to Edward and his shoulders arched and heaving. “In any case, there’s no reason to drag it out.” 

Edward was rubbed-raw on old wounds, sitting still rather than touching, but he said, “she doesn’t deserve it.”

Federico shrugged as he turned around. “Doesn’t matter. It’ll make it easier on them.” He took the towel that Edward offered him and wrapped it around his knuckles where the blood was still welling up out of the breaks in his skin. “Fuck,” he said like he just realized he’d done it. “Ezio’s stupid party is tonight.” 

He did stand up then, narrowed the space between them without touching Federico. He didn’t trap him because that ended with broken bones and they were too damn old for mid-day trips to the ER. Edward put his hands up because he wasn’t going to fight, he only wanted to say, “they made a choice. They didn’t choose her.”

“Ha,” Federico said. “Maybe they didn’t _then_ , but our father’s dead. You think I have the right to keep them from their Mother while she’s still alive?” He looked at Edward then, right at his face, just a quick meeting of the eyes before he looked sideways again. “I’ll have someone reach out, she shouldn’t bother you again.”

“That woman never loved you,” Edward said.

“She loved them,” was Federico’s come back, as quick as a slap. And he raised his eyebrows like _daring_ Edward to prove him wrong. Then he nodded, “how long did you get Jenny to keep them?”

“An hour,” Edward said.

“How much is she charging?”

“Too much.”

Federico walked over to drop into the couch. He tipped his head back and slouched so his legs were spread wide open and his bleeding hand was against the inside of his thigh. “And Haytham’s being a shit because…?”

“His sister is leaving in two months.”

“What the fuck does that matter?” Federico whispered. And then he laughed, it was a shock of sound: humorless and dry. “I don’t want anything in this whole, miserable, fucking world the way I want my children to grow up happy.” He said it like tears in his eyes, and grit his teeth against even the chance of crying. “Haytham going to be okay?”

Edward shrugged. “He’ll weather it. He wants us to get a house like normal people, pick a place and let him go to school with other kids.” He turned around and took a spot on a chair opposite Federico. “The lesbians think it could be nice. Adewale says he’s going to stay where he’s at; the sea is his home and all that.”

“Good, good,” Federico whispered. 

\--

If the world were good, or at very least, fair, Edward would never have been born at all. He’d figured that one out when he was still a stupid kid, wearing clothes too shabby to be seen in the big house, watching Phyllis prune her fucking roses in the garden. 

“Is he still drinking?” Phyllis asked him when she saw him.

There he was, no older than ten, and there she was: brittle and dry as a bone, looking at him the same way she must have looked at his Mother. He was filthy from days without bathing, hungry from refusing to back to the dog house and smarting from the way Maria-fucking-Auditore had turned him around at the kitchen door and pushed him out again saying, _the kitchen is a clean place_ before she locked the door. “Yes,” Edward said.

“Have you been?” Phyllis asked.

Fury was a feeling he thought he must have been born with, because there wasn’t a memory he had of life that wasn’t filled up to the brim with it. Edward said, “ _no_. Are you?”

“No,” Phyllis said. She finished with her roses and dusted off the bench she meant to sit on. Her gardening gloves were made out of the skin of a baby, soft as butter as they slid off her hands but she dropped them into her lap like she didn’t care. When she motioned, he came over to her. There was nothing human in the way she looked at him, nothing sympathetic at all. But her fingers touched his face with something like kindness. “Your Mother didn’t care for herself, Edward.”

As he’d heard it, his Mother hadn’t cared much for anything.

Phyllis rubbed her thumb against a crust of dirt by his ear. “Do try harder to take care of yourself. Remember,” and her hands cupped his face, “he doesn’t care how dirty you are or how hungry you are.”

“Neither do you,” was as bold as he’d ever been. “Neither does _Maria_.”

Phyllis smiled at him. “I don’t care about anyone. That’s no excuse for treating yourself this way,” was almost amused. She picked her gloves up and tucked them into her elbow held tight to her body as she stood up. “Maria is a bitch,” like a sigh. She regarded him. “Why didn’t Mrs. Finch feed you?”

“Maria locked me out,” Edward said.

Phyllis sighed. “I’ll have to change the locks on the doors then,” but she didn’t care about him. She only cared about Maria’s hands on her house. Phyllis left him there.

(And Edward broke Federico’s nose two weeks later. Maria was a fire-breathing demon with her hands around his arms, hissing into his face about how he had no right to touch her child but she said, ‘ _don’t you ever touch Ezio_ like she’d forgotten it was Federico’s face he’d cracked into pieces.)

\--

“I don’t understand why I can’t go,” Jenny said. “I’m eighteen.” 

This was the exact same argument they’d had before they left home, on the plane, when they landed, when they checked into the hotel, and this morning. Edward knew his part by rote, at this point. But there was his daughter watching him straighten his collar in the mirror with her hand on her hip. “There’s alcohol,” he said.

“I won’t drink it,” she said.

“Grown men that act like fools.”

“I know how to take down a grown man,” Jenny said. She waved her hands to cut off his rebuttal that it wasn’t about her, or how she’d gone off and decided she was ready to be an adult. She said, “I want to know why I can’t go to a family party when I’m a part of this family. Why do I only get to go to the boring things, like christenings and children’s birthday parties?”

Edward was standing by the sink and she was blocking the only exit with her body, so aside from shoving her out of the way, there was simply no way he was going to leave without answering her to her satisfaction. “Because the only family you need to be concerned about being a part of is this one,” he motioned at the hotel room around them. “The rest of them? They’re miserable, damaged people.”

Jenny had her Mother’s pretty face with his hair (but actually brushed and kept nice). Life wasn’t fair and that was why she’d ended up an orphan with nothing but an alcoholic for a father but, all the same, most of the time he thought he did alright getting his shit together to give her a childhood worth talking about. “Then why are you going?” But more importantly, “what happened this afternoon? Why is there blood on the wall—Don’t roll your eyes, Dad. I’m _scared_.”

“I’m going because I said I’d go,” he said. “Your uncle was upset because his Mother was here earlier.”

Jenny just sighed. “That’s just another thing I don’t know anything about.”

“She’s not relevant to you.”

“She’s relevant to _you_ ,” Jenny snapped. “You’re relevant to _me_. You don’t get to decide what I get to know—I don’t know if you know this but you’re not the only one passing out information on our family. The whole damn internet is full of it.” But as soon as she’d said it, as soon as the words were out and Edward was rethinking his position on not picking her up and relocating her out of the doorway, she relented with a peaceful step backward. “Look,” she said like she was going to back-pedal. “You’re not okay. It’s happened before, it always _happens_ when you go near these people. You always tell me that it’s not important or it’s not worth talking about but—I’m _not_ a child, Dad.”

Haytham introduced himself to the conversation by clearing his throat, looking skinny as a reed with his fist knocking against his leg as he shrugged off saying, “I _am_ a child. She’s right, Dad. I mean—Uncle Federico’s okay when it’s just him but you get around the rest of them and it’s,” he shrugged again.

Edward sighed. “Sometimes, you don’t get the answers you want when you want them.”

Jenny looked like she was going to scream at him; but Haytham got there first, “whatever.”

“I’ll be back,” he said to Jenny. “Mary should be here.”

“Whatever,” Jenny said. “ _Go_.” She waved her hands at him and walked away with one arm hugged around her body and the other pulling her phone out of her pocket. 

\--

Edward found Desmond hiding by the bar, looking inconspicuous while he sipped club soda and looked at his phone then-and-again. It took him a second glance before he recognized Edward and smiled at him. “Hey,” he said. Then crinkled up his brow and said, “everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” (He used to be better at lying.) “How’d they get you out here?”

“Altair,” Desmond said. He slid his phone into his pocket and motioned out onto the floor of the club they had met up at. Somewhere in the sea of bodies, beyond the music, was the god damn baby himself. “You?”

“Federico,” Edward said.

Desmond snorted. “Well, I’m leaving in the morning. And now I don’t have to show up for Christmas.” He took a drink of his soda and made a face at the taste of it. They were quiet together, while Edward flagged down a bartender and ordered a drink that he was going to try very hard not to swallow. When it came, it sat there in front of him like sweet-amber temptation.

“Malik here?” Edward asked.

“Ha,” Desmond said. “Malik doesn’t come to these.”

“He in the city?”

“No. They’re fighting at the moment,” Desmond looked at the drink and then at Edward and took another sip of his own drink. When he set it down again he ran his tongue across his lips, “what happened?” was nothing at all like the child that Desmond had been. He was a full-grown man (at last), looking impatient as he said, “is Altair going to get dragged into it?” Because now was not a _good_ time for Altair to get dragged into it.

Edward turned the glass on the bar, “Mama Maria showed up today, she wants Federico to forgive her so she can get the other two back.” He wanted to drink the stupid thing and he couldn’t quite bring himself to lift it up. (But he could, he had so many times in the past.) He did pick up the glass again. “And my children have been reading the internet.”

Desmond had his cousin’s face—all the important features—but he had none of the rage. Anger looked sullen and dim on Desmond’s face: nothing more than an out of focus stare and a slight crinkle at the edge of his mouth. He put his hand across the top of the glass sitting in front of Edward and slid it back toward the bartender. “She’s not worth this,” Desmond said.

He'd spent most of his life in a passive pursuit of trying to figure out what the monsters of his childhood were worth. It seemed there was no unravelling it; the closest he’d come was trying to drown them. Edward turned on the barstool so he was looking at Desmond, “Federico will do it.”

“Why?” Desmond asked (without thinking). He looked outward, toward the crowd of bodies, scanning to find Ezio and his brother. The pair of them were like sore thumbs, they stuck out everywhere they went. (And one of them, at least, was too fucking old to still be hanging around places like this.) “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to find Altair.” He took a step away from the bar and Edward was leaning forward to grab his drink again when Desmond’s hand grabbed it away from him. 

“That’s impolite,” Edward said.

Desmond tipped the cup up and drank the whole of it in one long gulp. Then he slapped it down again. “Go home,” he said, his voice was raw and hoarse. “Your children are more important than this bullshit,” he motioned at the whole of the club. “Let the Auditores worry about themselves.” 

So said the man that went to save the baby from them.

\--

Edward was sixteen-years-old, working out how he felt about the world anyway he could manage. He knew every path in the garden, he knew every corner of the estate and he made a great display of living like royalty that got him into the panties of every star-struck girl that gave him the time of day. 

But he was sixteen years old, hitting Federico as _hard_ as he could, any way he could. He was taking every hit he could, aiming to break his ribs and his hands and his _face_ and coming home at the end of the day with blood soaked into his clothes. He was livid bruises and split skin in the kitchen of the dog house, drinking whatever liquor was left in easy reach while he contemplated eating something besides fancy cheese and dry cereal.

Calvin was drunk in the afternoons (and the mornings, and every night). He was a happy drunk, always smiling to himself as his gut swelled up with the cirrhosis that was going to kill him one day. He was friendly with a hand on Edward’s shoulder and his yellow teeth showing through his thin-thin lips.

“You lose again,” Calvin asked him one of those afternoons. 

“Federico doesn’t cry,” Edward said. He turned his head to spit blood into the sink and Calvin laughed—at the blood or at Edward’s loss or at himself for stumbling in house slippers—but he turned back in time for Calvin to grip his shoulder and look him right in the face.

“You better watch it with that boy, Edward. One day you’re going to push it too far. You’re not one of them, they won’t protect you.” And he smacked his palm against Edward’s sore cheek with another laugh.

“Fuck you,” Edward said because he was sixteen and full-grown, drinking liquor like a man. Because Calvin had never even tried to teach him manners and did nothing but snort at the words. He was nodding to himself, over and over, as he shuffled back. 

There they were, two alcoholics, regarding each other in the kitchen. “Too bad your Mother died,” Calvin said.

“Yeah, a real tragedy.” He took another drink. “What the fuck do you care?”

“She looked like her Mother,” Calvin said. “I always thought it.”

Edward was _aching_ when he said, “what was she like?”

“Ruth?” Calvin shrugged. “Phyllis said she was always whining, she said if the heroin hadn’t killed her, she would have ended up beaten to death by some guy. Junkies are like that,” he waved his hand in the air, dismissing his own daughter’s life like it never mattered. “No drugs, eh, Edward? I don’t care what you get up to—stay away from drugs.”

Edward nodded because if he’d opened his mouth he might have started screaming and never stopped.

\--

Outside, he was thinking about calling a ride (thinking Mary would be awake and have a rental and a will to find him). He was turning his phone over and over, thinking about it on endless repeat to the sound of the music thrumming through the walls. 

Federico said, “I’m not sure he’s noticed I’m gone,” from somewhere behind him. He was standing away from the door, looking shady and disreputable about smoking a cigarette. (A habit he’d been trying to quit for years, so he said.) “Of course, Leonardo showed up. So, I imagine they’ll either be in the bathroom fucking or the baby will have started a brawl in about five minutes.”

“You know what my kids asked me tonight?” It wasn’t even relevant to Federico, to what he’d said or where they were standing. But Federico raised his eyebrows like asking for information, and Edward said, “they asked me why I was here. I couldn’t tell them.”

“Because you feel guilty,” Federico said.

“Because I don’t want them to know. I don’t want them to know about Phyllis buying me from my Mother. I don’t want them to know about Calvin’s drunk raving. I don’t want them to know I grew up hungry, and filthy and alone while the rest of you lived in that _fucking house_.” His voice felt like it was going to shatter into pieces, and he paused a second to let it settle. “They don’t know; or they do but I haven’t told them. Your kids—they don’t know what I’ve done to you, what your Mother did. Desmond’s kid—she’ll never know what his Father did, what your Mother did.”

“You didn’t do anything to me,” Federico said.

“Look in a fucking mirror.” Because it was on his _face_ , his long-since broken nose and a scatter of little scars. His crooked teeth. There were scars on his chest and his arms and his wrists. Federico was _stupid_ and he never _cried_ (almost never), and he never, ever gave in first. Edward shrugged.

“What’s the fucking point, Edward?” Federico threw the cigarette to the side and spread his arms. He motioned around them, at the nothing in the dark. “Either way, I get fucked. I don’t forgive her and she’ll find a way to make sure they know I didn’t—they’ll know she showed up and she asked and I turned her down. Or I accept and they get their Mother back, I get stuck smiling at her every fucking holiday until she dies.”

The door opened again, a belch of noise interrupted the conversation long enough for Desmond to drag Altair out. Desmond was making an Oscar-worthy attempt at laughing along with whatever Altair was laughing about, but it fell flat when they all ended up staring at one another on the sidewalk. Altair looked sideways at Desmond, “what happened?” like it could only be disaster.

“Mama Maria,” Desmond said.

Altair looked at Federico first, “what? Did she do something to you? Why didn’t you call me—I told you—”

“She wants me to forgive her,” Federico said.

Altair was struck dumb at that, floundering while standing still. Desmond tucked his hands into his pockets while Altair worked through all possible meanings of the sentence and arrived at, “do you believe her?”

“I don’t think it matters,” Federico looked at his watch. “I’m going home. You need a ride?”

Edward nodded. 

Desmond cleared his throat, “Federico, it _matters_.” Then he slapped his hand against Altair’s arm, “come on.”

\--

Edward was thirty four (or maybe thirty five) when he was abruptly removed from his exile and deposited in his Aunt’s house. He had been given enough time to gather a few things, and since he’d been caught with his son, the few things he took the time to gather mostly belonged to Haytham. Jenny had been safely tucked away with the lesbians, on a small vacation (from her brother) and Edward had only barely managed to call and let them know he’d been kidnapped.

The distance from exile to California couldn’t have been measured in miles, or _hours_ but in the growing depth of dread that bled outward from his chest. And Haytham had been vocal in his constant disapproval of every step of the process, from packing to driving to the plane to the house they found themselves in.

He had been four-almost-five, laying belly up across Edward’s lap as he sat in an armless chair opposite of Mama Maria smiling indulgently but insincerely at his face. The boy was dressed in whatever Edward grabbed out of the top drawer, tanned as old leather, groaning about how bored he was while he kicked his feet. 

“Apparently, disadvantages are genetic.”

“You brought me here,” was as defiant as Edward had ever been to her face.

Mama Maria tilted her head. “As you are undoubtedly aware, my son is unmoved by shows of force. Federico is obedient, so long as he knows there is no alternative for him. When he looks around the room on his wedding day, he would have mistaken the absence of your face as a possible weakness on my part. You will be in attendance; he will do as he’s told.” Then, she motioned toward Haytham. “Obviously, I did not anticipate a child. It doesn’t surprise me that you have them, just that you’re allowed around them.” 

Haytham tipped his head to look at her and Edward leaned just far enough down to get his hand under the boy’s back and lifted him up so he was facing away from Maria. “We’d benefit from a bath,” he said. “Do we have a room?”

Maria smiled at him, like they were friends. “Of course, Edward.”

\--

Federico took them to the hotel but Edward didn’t manage to motivate himself out of the car. He was feeling inconstant and uncertain. So, they were sitting there in a parked car, watching the lights in the parking lot flickering. 

“I can’t help you make this choice,” Edward said when the car had finished settling itself into place. He looked over at Federico, at how garish he looked in the LED lights. 

“I think you’ve made your position on the issue clear,” Federico said. He slouched in the driver’s seat and fiddled with the gear shift. “I’ve got to say, next time I show up to your hotel room, I’d rather have a blow job.”

“You’d always rather have a blow job,” Edward countered. He leaned the seat back to get the glare of the light out of his eyes and put one of his arms over his head. “Of course, your wife did tell me she was signing over all dick sucking duties to me.”

“Yeah,” Federico agreed. “You know my Mother planned this. She knew it was his birthday—so I’ve spent all day trying to figure out if she misses him, or if she thought we’d have a fight about it, or if she thought I’d do this,” he motioned at the whole car, “spend the whole day miserable. I’m so fucking tired.”

“My position isn’t clear.” Edward put his hand up to stall any dirty, distracting talk from Federico. “On your Mother. My position is that you don’t owe it to her, or to your brother and sister, to forgive her. Desmond didn’t _forgive_ his father; he did forgive you.”

“It doesn’t matter what she says I won’t believe her; so it doesn’t matter if she’s sincere.” But, more importantly, “is Mary sharing a room with you?”

“No.”

Federico looked over at him, “misery loves a blow job.”

Edward laughed and Federico laughed with him. For a half-beat, there was perfect peace and harmony in the world. But the next minute was sober, and dense, and quiet. Edward leaned forward and across the center console. His hand felt rough-as-old ropes across the short hair on the nape of Federico’s neck. He kissed him like they were more than sometimes fuckbuddies (and _cousins_ ); and Federico tipped his head and held onto it. His fingers pulled at Edward’s shirt. 

“You need to go talk to your wife,” Edward whispered. “Let her help you. Ask for sexual favors once you’ve got it worked out.” He went to lean back but Federico’s hand in his shirt pulled him back into place. 

“Do any of my choices end with losing you?”

There was not _telling_ what would happen. “Not me,” he said; he didn’t say it lightly, but resolutely. “You’ll lose someone,” like _Desmond_ and Altair (who had always followed his cousin, everywhere he went). “I don’t think it’ll be me.”

Federico nodded and let him go. “Ok. Get out, I’m sure Cristina will have been told I left the party already.” 

\--

When Phyllis was running short on time and Edward was still full of liquor, he sat at her bedside wearing khaki’s that Mama Maria had made him wear. He said, “why did you buy me from my Mother?”

Phyllis was going gray, losing all her color (and fire), but there was still nothing _human_ in her face. There was no satisfaction in her face about it either. “She would have sold you to someone sooner or later, better that she sell you to your own family.”

“You put me out like a fucking dog,” Edward said.

“I did,” Phyllis agreed. She shifted how she was laying on the pillows, fussed at the folded over blanket that covered her wasting-away body. When she looked at him, her eyes were dull but her stare still seemed to _see_ him: as damaged and as flawed as he was. “Maria Auditore would have worn your skin as a coat if she caught you fucking her son. That _stupid_ boy was so set on it too. He was going to have you, one way or the other, he was going to have you.”

“I wouldn’t have—” but there was no arguing facts. Edward would have; because he did (not so long ago, not so long ago at all). It was stupid that he was the one with a red face and shame, but there it was. “You didn’t send me away for my benefit.”

“Oh,” Phyllis said, the very same way she was known to smack little boys when they shouted too loud. “Make up your mind. Either you want in or you want out—you can’t have both. Don’t you understand that by now?” there was no anger to sustain her voice or make it sharp. She’d gone soft with disease (but not will). “Maria’s been playing at it for years, she said she wanted a family when she wanted money and she’s been pretending she’s happy in my house ever since! The stupid fat boy took the money when he came searching for his father and he’s been begging at my door for more ever since. You’re all such stupid, preoccupied, _small_ people.” There was spittle on her lips when she stuttered to a pause. Her fingers were delicate and slim (and paper thin) when they rubbed at her lips. “Yes,” she said to him, “I bought you like a show dog because your Mother brought you to me, starving and filthy and covered in parasites—that’s the love you think you’re missing? And I put you out because I couldn’t have loved you and old Peg didn’t fight for you. Calvin didn’t care what became of you. You’ve been standing outside my kitchen door for years, thinking there’s something great happening in here—but you look at the ones that didn’t get put out, Edward. Look at them: at that boy who's got you by the balls, at his Mother, at that stupid fat boy.” 

“They had _a choice_ ,” Edward hissed at her.

“So did your Mother,” Phyllis said. “She took the money.” And the fit exhausted her because   
Phyllis leaned back against the headboard. “You’ve got _disadvantages_ , Edward.”

He leaned back into the seat by her bed. 

After a moment, after staring out the window for a minute (or two), Phyllis looked at him again. “I can’t give you answers, not the ones you want. Life is cruel, and it is unfair. You’ve got a chance that none of the other ones ever will.”

“Yeah, exile.”

“Freedom,” Phyllis said. “Take it and run, boy.”

\--

Mary was sitting on his couch when he got home, reading a book in a puddle of light. She was wearing one of his long sleeve shirts with a throw across her legs. Her hair had the look of being recently pulled out of a wet braid. “You’re early,” she said mostly into the screen of her phone when she checked the time. “Did they opt out of the gangbang this year?” There was a poor attempt at a dirty smile on her face that faded as she closed her book and leaned forward to drop it on the table in front of the couch. 

“No,” he said, “there’s an age limit, you must be this young and stupid to participate.” He shuffled over and sat on the opposite end of the couch from her. 

“So you couldn’t get it up.” Mary shifted how she was sitting, crossed her legs in front of her on the couch and rested both of her hands in her lap. “I told you you were getting old, Kenway. Might be time to buy some stock in the little blue pills.”

He made a hearty attempt at laughing and it went dim as he motioned toward the doorway to the bedrooms of the suite. “Are they sleeping?”

“They are in bed,” Mary answered. “Jenny was angry, so she’s probably talking to her friends. Haytham’s probably sleeping. Being a tireless shit is exhausting.” 

They passed a minute like that, listening for the sounds of his children moving in the other room. Her looking him over for fresh wounds while he looked down at his feet. He kicked his shoes off and leaned down to tug his socks off. The room was chilly from the air conditioning and it nipped at his toes almost as soon as they were bare. 

“You look like shit,” Mary said.

Edward nodded. When he looked over, she was sliding forward across the couch, inviting herself up against his side and wrapping the throw around him. She was warm everywhere, tucked up to his chest with her arm across his ribs and her face resting on his shoulder. It had always been easy to talk to her: easy to spill out all his ugly secrets for her to keep safe. “Do you think I should tell my children?”

“I think, if you make that choice, it needs to be your choice.” Her hand slid down to find his under the blanket and her fingers worked their way into the spaces between his. “They care; they’re good kids. They didn’t grow up in a world where nothing bad ever happens, but they grew up safe. You did that for them. You’ve kept them safe all this time, Edward.”

“Yeah.”

Mary tipped her head and looked up at him. “You don’t owe it to them to tell them. But if you did, I think they’re both old enough, and wise enough, and _good_ enough to understand the only important thing is that you survived and you have thrived. Maybe it would help them understand why you’re here, again. Why you’re trying so hard to help him.”

“I’m not blameless,” Edward said.

“Nobody is.”

He tightened his arm around her and she squeezed her fingers around his. When she moved, it was a flawless motion, sliding herself right into his lap with the blanket puddled at her hips. She had her hands resting against his shoulders. “I never wanted to come back; I never wanted this.”

Mary smiled like her heart was breaking while she nodded along with the sound of his voice. But, just as quick she was shifting on her knees so she was settled like a skin-hot-heating-pad right across his hips. Her hands slid down to pluck at the buttons of his shirt while she thought-it-through. “You’re not a convincing liar, Kenway. You never have been very good at it.” She pushed her hands into his shirt and folded it back across his shoulders. Her fingers were slow and thorough working at all the tension in his shoulders. “It’s okay to want your family.” Her voice was low and quiet, like the long gray shadows that filled up the hotel room. “It’s okay to only want one or two of them. And it’s okay to walk away.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Edward said.

“So don’t,” Mary said, “but stop thinking you can fix this for him. You didn’t do this to him, you can’t protect him from it. The only thing you can do is be there when he needs you.” She pulled her hands out of his shirt.

“Tease,” he whispered.

“Oh? I’m a tease,” her hand slid down between them, fitting in the slim space between their bodies. Her fingers were familiar and intimate gripping at his dick through his pants, “did you manage a boner while I wasn’t paying attention. Hm,” she hummed as her fingers moved, “no. Seems not.” She was grinning at him, like she had in the beginning, when they were both disasters that kept finding one another at the same bar. When she pulled her hand free, she said, “this is why I have to keep Anne around. She’s always ready to go.”

“She cooks better than we do,” he agreed.

“And she sings better.” Then Mary sighed and slid backward off his lap, she pulled him up by the open edges of his shirt, “come on. I’ll get you tucked in.”

\--

Edward gave up on sleep long before dawn. He took his blanket and his bare toes and went to sit on the balcony and watch the sky change colors. 

Jenny found him first, wearing her pajamas and socks (like a smart girl), holding her phone in one fist as she opened the sliding door and stepped outside with him. She closed it again and dragged a chair over so they were an arm’s length apart. He was slouching with his knees pushed against the rails and his feet between them. 

“What’d you find out about me on the internet?” he asked without looking at her.

“Not much,” she said. “That your Mother died. I mean, I already knew that you didn’t have parents or we would have seen them.” Her voice was small and delicate, picking at every word she came up with. “There’s not a lot about you; there is a lot about them.”

The debacle with Altair and his internet lover had generated a cult following. It had been funny in the beginning, when everyone that cared had shown up to the internet, taking turns digging up facts and making theories. Six years later, Edward had given up trying to keep track of who cared and who didn’t care. But it was out there, all the dirty secrets the baby had unearthed when he took over his Grandmother’s throne. 

“Dad,” Jenny whispered. 

Edward looked at her, and he thought of the very first moment he’d ever seen her--she was a fat-faced six year old, showing up in his life with no warning. She came with papers that made her his responsibility and blood tests that made it clear she was definitely his daughter. Edward met her in the quick, short months after her Mother died. They hadn’t been friends for years after; she was born with her Mother’s face and his stupid stubbornness. 

“I just want to know that--” and she hesitated, “that being _here_ , being with _them_ isn’t hurting you. You’ve always told us we had to take care of ourselves. You’ve always been there when we needed you.”

“They aren’t hurting me,” Edward said. It was true, more or less. He looked over at her, “you remember, when we met, you hated me. You hated everyone.”

“My Mother just died,” Jenny said.

“You said, I’d never be your father. You were so sure that you were going to hate me for the rest of your life, you used to write it out on cards and leave it for me to find.” He smiled but it wasn’t _funny_ , really. “And then Haytham was born and you decided you were going to hate him too.”

“That was a good decision, I stand by it,” Jenny said.

“You and me, we don’t have to talk about all that. You and me, we know what it was like back then. We know every mean thing we did. I don’t blame you because you were a child, and I don’t think you feel the same way you did anymore.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“But, no matter how we tell Haytham about it--he won’t ever understand, will he?”

Jenny sighed. “Did that woman that was here yesterday hurt you?”

Edward nodded with his jaw clenched and Jenny’s whole face going kind of pink as she turned away from looking at him to looking at the sunlight glistening across the pool water. He was thinking around to what he was going to say (in his defense), but the silence dragged.

“Did she hurt Uncle Federico?”

“Yes,” Edward.

“So that’s why you’re here, because you and him, you’re the only ones that understand it? That’s why you--” she waved her hand in front of herself to indicate the whole tangled disaster of his ongoing semi-sexual relationship with his cousin. 

“More or less.” 

Jenny sighed again. “Dad,” was very quiet. But, “I love you. You’ve always been the best. No matter what happened, don’t--don’t think that if I ever heard it that I’d think any differently about you. I mean, I know you used to drink and start fights and all that,” because he’d been in the _process_ of becoming a better man when he met her, “it doesn’t matter. You’re my father, and I love you.” She hugged him and he wrapped his arm around her to hug her back. 

“I love you too,” he said.

\--

Ezio showed up at a semi-reasonable hour looking impeccably dressed and offensively alert (for a man that should have had a hangover). Edward had been taking a shower at the time so one of his children (traitorous beasts) must have let him in and left him standing in the little living area of the suite. Since he was expecting to find nobody but his ill-tempered twelve year old, Edward hadn’t bothered with the precaution of a shirt. He was wearing a pair of sweats he bought at a gift shop at at the airport and a towel he was using to dry his hair. 

“Hi,” he said when he turned the corner to find Ezio there.

For his part, Ezio looked _bored_ by the fashion atrocity standing in front of him. He slid his phone into his pocket, “good morning.”

“They didn’t tell me--”

“He actually left,” Ezio said, he turned toward the door to indicate that Haytham had left despite being told not to. “He said he was going to see Mary.” (Which was still not doing what he was told to do.) “I’m here to take you to breakfast at Federico’s house.”

“Why?” Edward asked.

“Because my brother is stupid and, one can only assume, has no sense of self worth.” Ezio slid his hands into his pockets and wrinkled up his eyebrows in distaste. “My Mother will not show up at your door again. I’m sorry that she did this time.”

“Who told you?” 

Ezio smiled but there was no humor in it. “It would be easier to list the people who did not. You,” he lifted a finger, “And Federico,” and another one. Ezio had always been _pretty_ , always too attractive to be considered real. But he was a grown-man now, looking at him with the full-depth of weariness that came with age and knowledge. “I have spent most of the night convincing my brother that we have made a family for ourselves and that should we desire to keep our family intact, we must consider the whole family when approaching a situation like we find ourselves in presently.”

Edward threw the towel on the couch. “That must have been a hard sell.”

“It had its memorable moments,” Ezio agreed. But more importantly, “the others have already made their decisions. Even Desmond, who does not take sides, has made a choice on this matter. My brother seems to believe that you will support him regardless and while I find that to be a very admirable and kind gesture on your part, I have no intention of allowing him to playact at forgiving our Mother.”

“So why do I have to go?” Edward asked. 

“Because he is hurt. We can convince him of our sincerity and the importance of choosing our own well-being and the health and well-being of our children over arbitrary forgiveness, but he is still hurt.” Ezio shifted his weight, “and he is very much like our Mother, he will not stop trying to get his own way. However stupid that way may be.”

“Fine, let me get dressed.

“Edward,” Ezio said. He said it very urgently, as if Edward had even moved (or as if he had not even meant to say it), “I don’t know what she did to you. I don’t know how she found you. I _promise_ you that she won’t try it again.” Then he motioned Edward toward the bedroom. “Go, get dressed. They will have eaten everything by the time we get there.”

\--

Federico was wearing a dark, long-sleeve, collared shirt sitting at the head of the table with all the brash insolence of a child. His fingers were turning a tall glass of orange juice the way Calvin used to turn his tumblers full of scotch in the old den. There were no children present at his table, only the cousins spread out with empty plates and full glasses, looking varying degrees of worried and annoyed. 

“The children are in the kitchen,” Federico said when he saw Haytham (and Jenny) and Edward sent Haytham away while the boy groaned and stomped his feet every step of the way, but Jenny lingered a half-step with her eyebrows up in a quiet plea. “She can stay if you want her to,” Federico said. 

Edward shrugged and Jenny was biting back her smile as she pulled out a seat at the long table. Claudia did smile at her and ask her about her plans for college in a quiet undertone. They weren’t friends but Claudia had learned the fine art of friendliness. “Is there a special significance to the seating arrangement?” Edward asked across the table.

“No,” Ezio said. There were three seats left, one assumed one for Ezio, one for him and one for Cristina. “Sit.”

“I’ll go get breakfast,” Federico said. He rolled forward out of his seat, wincing as he stood and disappeared the same way that Haytham had gone. When he was gone, the others all looked at each other back-and-forth, like drawing question marks in the air. 

Claudia pinched the bridge of her nose, “talk to him,” she repeated as if it were an echo of an earlier conversation. “I said these words. _Talk_ to him.”

Ezio pulled out the chair next to Altair far enough to sit in it. He moved without much effort, clearly unburdened by any severe injury, but he looked at his sister with unfriendly wrath. “It is difficult to speak to someone that will not _talk_. I got him here.”

“You could have called,” Altair said.

“Ha,” Ezio mumbled. He took a drink of juice and looked disappointed.

“How would getting in a fight with Federico have improved your life?” Desmond asked Altair.

Edward hesitated with his hand across the high back of one of the chairs and in the middle of Desmond explaining how Malik would have been upset (and he would have been) and how Altair wouldn’t have cared (but he would have), he said, “excuse me,” like any of them cared where he went.

In the kitchen, Haytham was sitting sullenly with Vincenzio, picking up and dropping the offering of sausage and toast. Cristina was rubbing Federico’s arm like they’d been halfway through a full conversation with their eyebrows, but she smiled at Edward as soon as she saw him. 

“I can’t believe you let him bring you here,” Federico said.

“You’ve met Ezio,” Edward said back, “he gets whatever he wants. Cristina, Haytham can watch the kids if you want to join us for breakfast.” He was _certain_ that his son hadn’t made the offer. But just as certain that she wouldn’t have left a three year old, a five year old and a seven year old alone in the kitchen. (Adding in a moody twelve year old might not have improved matters much, but at least there was a viable tattletale if necessary.) 

“Thank you, Haytham,” Cristina said.

Haytham didn’t even acknowledge her. Edward was close enough to smack the back of his head and the boy smiled at Cristina without comment. “I can carry something,” he said.

\--

Breakfast was a slow-start affair. All the bold boys with big ideas were sitting quietly behind their plates while Federico sat at the head of the table without eating. Ezio was marinating in his displeasure at the whole affair while his sister was broiling in her disapproval. 

“Well,” Cristina said when the scraping of silverware across plates got to the point of being deafening. “I can see why you are so efficient at getting things done!” She was smiling so merrily while she shook her head. “Claudia, you start.”

“First,” Claudia said, “it needs to be acknowledge that you are _grown men_ and you cannot solve every problem by _beating_ on it.” All of that wrath was directed at Ezio, not Federico (a curious change of pace to be sure) and then she sat back in her seat. “My opinion is that we continue to direct her to the lawyers and allow them to deflect. I do not believe that she is currently sincere in her aim and I see no benefit in allowing her to speak.” She motioned to Desmond at her side.

“Uh,” he said (as if he hadn’t been brought here to voice his side), “I, uh--I understand that she’s not my Mother, but my past experience with Mama Maria puts me in a position where it is in my best interest not to interact with her when it can be avoided.”

“That was a very long way to say you don’t want her around,” Altair said. “I don’t want her around. You already know the reasons,” he motioned at all of them but he was looking right at Desmond when he said it. “Ezio?”

“The potential for gain is far less than the almost certain cost of giving her an opportunity to explain herself. I see no reason to give her a platform on which she will build a new set of lies and manipulation.” Ezio looked at Edward (sitting uncomfortably at his side, trying not to take a turn).

“She’s not my Mother,” Edward said. “She’s not asking me for forgiveness.” He waved his hand at Cristina. 

She was sitting opposite her husband, looking at him across a table full of half-empty dishes, watching how he turned his glass of orange juice without making any attempt to eat. She was thinking (maybe) about the bruises he was hiding under his clothes, or the split in his knuckles that was brilliant red from being picked at. “I would not trust that woman around my husband or my children for a single moment,” Cristina said. “I understand that this is very difficult for many of you,” she looked each of them individually, “either because you love her or because you have good reason not to.” She paused at Edward, waited until he shrugged a bit and then looked back at the whole table again. “However, the matter remains that Maria Auditore cannot simply be ignored. She is your Mother,” she looked at Claudia and then at Ezio, “and she was raised to get her way,” she glanced at Altair. “It would be prudent to consider alternatives to attempting to hold her off indefinitely.”

They were all slapped-silent in shock, except Federico. He sat with a crooked kind of smile on his face, turning the cup on the table. When he opened his mouth, he sighed like he couldn’t contain it, “Mom won’t give up. The very fact that she showed up at Edward’s front door on Ezio’s birthday is proof of that.”

“No,” Ezio said.

“What’s the alternative?” Claudia demanded, “because we have to consider more than--”

“Give her what she wants,” Federico said. He shifted how he was sitting and his hand grasped at his ribs when he did it. “She wants her children back. There’s no reason that you can’t speak to her or visit her if you want to. The longer we keep building barriers, the longer we drag this out, the more damage she can do. Jenny,” he motioned down the table at Edward’s daughter (looking small and horrified), “is going to college. Raise your hand if you think our Mother won’t show up on her campus telling her about how we’ve put her out in the cold.” 

“Jenny knows how to close a door,” Jenny said.

Federico looked forgiving when he said, “you’ve never met her. Even if you did close the door, would Haytham? Would Leonardo--Kadar? Malik?”

“Malik would,” Claudia, Desmond and Altair said almost in exact unison. There was a smile that went back and forth between the three of them.

“Why would she go near Haytham? He’s _twelve_ ,” Jenny said. And when she looked down the table, trying to find any shared sense of how ludicrous the idea was, all she saw was a bunch of grown men suddenly picking at their fingernails and Claudia looking terribly sad. “Well, it would be a mistake. We protect our family.”

“Look,” Federico said.

“No,” Ezio slapped his hand against the table. “No,” was no calmer than the rattle of silverware and glasses. “ _You_ are not proposing that we keep her away by drawing her in-- _You_ ,” he shouted as he stood up and threw his arm out to motion at his brother, “are doing what you have always done! You are _assuming_ that we cannot or would not protect you.”

“Sit down,” Federico said.

“No!” Ezio shouted. “ _You_ may not make this choice!”

Federico stood up then, so suddenly his chair fell over and the clap of the wood striking the floor was loud enough it must have startled the children in the kitchen. They were crying in the aftermath, only just audible over the sound of Federico cursing at his brother in Italian, all quick-and-low, building up to, “I _will_ make this choice, because I didn’t get to choose what to do with my life, or who to marry, or where to live! I didn’t get to choose to join the business or whore around Europe, I didn’t get to choose to flaunt my conquests in our father’s face or hide them, I _didn’t_ get a choice and _she_ saw to that!”

“Stop it,” Claudia hissed at her brothers. She kicked her own chair back and threw her napkin on the plates, “get out. Go and beat your stupid chests where it won’t scare the children.” She fluttered her hand at them and followed Cristina into the kitchen. 

Ezio was grinding his teeth as he stared at the table.

“We would fight her,” Altair said in the quiet. He didn’t stand, but look up at Federico. “You need to know that. I’d fight her as long as it took, you don’t _have_ to make a compromise here.”

Federico tugged at his shirt, “I understand what you are all willing to sacrifice and I am _saying_ , it is not worth the cost.”

Ezio snorted a laugh then. “ _You_ are not worth the cost, that is what you mean to say.”

“It’s not me or her,” Federico said. 

“You can dress it up however you like. You have made the choice, the very _noble_ and _giving_ choice to let her win.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Federico snapped and then he threw his hands up, “an idiot,” he repeated before he walked away. 

Ezio was furious and pink-faced, darting to the side to follow but Edward grabbed him by the back of the shirt. He only just barely ducked out of the way of getting elbowed for his effort. While he didn’t understand the exact meaning of the string of curses Ezio called him, he understood the general meaning.

“Sit down,” Edward said. He stood up as he yanked Ezio back into his seat. “I’ll go.” He went behind Altair’s chair and down the hall that led to Federico’s study. He found the man pacing back and forth from one shelf to the next, turning with quick-quick steps when he met a wall. The door was thick, and heavy and it swung on the hinges oh-so-easily. It didn’t slap noisily against the frame but glide into place with a gentle click. Edward was looking for any obvious broken bones (like ribs) when he asked, “Did you break anything?”

“Lawn chair,” Federico said.

Edward leaned against a shelf and watched Federico make two more revolutions around the room. “He’s right.”

Federico spun on his heels, with his hands out to the side, shouting, “does it matter?” and, “am I _wrong_?”

“About Maria? No.” Edward stepped away from the bookcase, moving slowly and deliberately forward until he was just beyond punching distance, “about it mattering? Yes. They know now, Federico. They’ve filled in the missing words you never said. No matter how hard you push him, Ezio will not budge. Do you understand this?”

“She _will_ come after our children, Edward.”

“Then let Altair handle her. He did it before.”

“For _Desmond_.”

And this was how their arguments became _fist fights_. This was how Edward had sent his childhood, raging against Federico deflecting every single blow. This exact moment, when he hit as hard as he could, with knuckles aiming to break bones, and Federico stood without flinching or crying, bloody-and-bruised and still unbroken. “Long live the king,” Edward said. He’d been turning that over in his head ever since Phyllis’ funeral, working out how Federico had arrived on a fat-faced little boy becoming his Grandmother’s living wrath. 

“You would bet the happiness of your children on it?” Federico asked. “On _Altair_ being a match for my Mother?”

“Yes,” Edward said. 

So would Federico, it was there on his face. “He wouldn’t quit. She hurt Desmond. He would take everything from her. He wouldn’t quit until she was living in the streets, begging for scraps--he might not stop even then.”

“Then let Ezio handle her. She won’t see it coming if it’s him. He’ll treat her nicely, he’ll put her in a villa in a nice part of Italy and he’ll make sure she has money to look presentable with her friends. He’ll keep her there with the promise that if she’s well-behaved he’ll hear her out, and she’ll be content with the money.”

Federico was exhausted when he fell into the chair. Every muscle and every bone in his body fell like it was weighted with stones. He tipped his head back and covered his face with both hands, mumbling nonsense into his palms. “God forgive me, I want her to suffer.” And he dropped his hands down. “But not them.”

“Then let Ezio handle her,” Edward repeated. 

“Fine,” Federico said. 

\--

They came back together, Haytham was sitting in the seat that Edward left behind. Jenny was holding Pietro while he alternated wiping his face with the back of his hand and eating cereal out of the cup she was holding for him. Vincenzio was sitting on Claudia’s lap, chatting idly with Desmond about a game they both understood. Vittoria was sitting on her Mother’s lap with red splotches all over her face leftover from where she had been crying. When she saw her Father, her whole face scrunched up like she was going to start crying again and she slid off her Mother’s lap with a hiccup of a sob and ran over to him.

Federico picked her up (and shouldn’t have, if the bitten noise of pain he made was any indication) and she shoved her face immediately into his neck where she mumbled a list of his wrongdoings. Federico rubbed her back while she listed his failures and said, “I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t want her near my children,” Federico said. “If you can keep her away, then do it.”

Ezio stopped pushing his fork around on the table long enough to look at his brother. “I can,” he promised. 

“Then it is settled,” Claudia said. 

And they broke apart with excuses, Desmond to an airport, Altair to wherever he went. Cristina took Pietro to clean up in the kitchen and Jenny took the others to play in the yard. Claudia pulled Ezio away with her, making a show of explaining how they’d already made plans (or where going to make plans, with Altair, about how to be rid of Maria). 

The dining room was a void of sound, with Federico standing at the head of the table. His fingers were moving restlessly against the back of the seat he stood next to while Edward stacked and scraped the plates. 

“Can I get a blow job now?” Federico asked.

“Does your study have a lock on the door?” Edward asked.

Federico thought about it a moment and then said, “I think it does. If it doesn’t, the bedroom does.”

\--

Between breakfast and lunch, Cristina cornered him in a hallway. Her hands were soft-skinned and pretty but no less demanding that her husband’s as she pulled him into the downstairs bathroom. She closed the door and flipped the lock and turned around to look at him with her hands on her hips.

“You told me I had to take over the dick sucking,” he said. 

Cristina rolled her eyes, “I do not care about what sort of sex you have with my husband.” Which was almost certainly a lie; she cared just enough to have secured an invitation to observe whenever she pleased and reserve the right to deny them without an explanation. “Why did you side with Ezio? That is not why you were here--even Federico said you were not going to meddle.”

Edward leaned against the sink with his arms across his chest. He felt old-and- _battered_ , bruised straight through to his bones. Every second that he tried to work out why he had even _shown up_ was another second of dredging up memories that he’d buried in silt. His head was shaking and Cristina was working up a fine froth of anger. “It has to be Ezio,” was the simplest of answers, “she has _nothing_ she can use against him. What will she say to him? I treasured you? I protected you from your father? I avenged every injustice you faced?” 

“She’ll use Federico against him.”

Edward laughed. “No, she _won’t_. It is in her best interest to allow Ezio to handle her care.”

“Because he loves her,” Cristina all-but-shouted. 

“I’m certain he’ll be sure to tell her that, just before he tells her that if she violates the terms of her exile, he will step aside and let Altair take over her case.” 

Cristina scowled at that, “and that will be enough?”

“You ever wonder where William ended up?” Edward asked. “I think about it sometimes, I try to imagine what Altair did when nobody was looking. He’s not dead, I know that. The old bitch used to say, ‘if they’re dead, they’re not suffering’. If there’s any single person alive on this planet that Mama Maria could _conceivably_ be afraid of, it would be Altair.”

“Why?” Cristina asked. “Half the time he’s an _idiot_ and the other half of the time he’s just fighting with Malik.”

And it was better that way; better to let Altair escape from his Grandmother. Edward thought about _that_ sometimes too, about how Altair had made something out of himself despite it all. “Two months before she stabbed her husband in the leg and removed him from his position at her company, Phyllis was just a housewife with a gardening hobby. Calvin should have listened when she told him to stop fucking around but he laughed at her. Maria’s smarter than her father.”

Cristina didn’t look satisfied (but who was, really) but she nodded at least. Then she stepped forward and tugged his shirt around so it was sitting right on his chest. And she brushed his hair away from his face and stood very close to him, looking at his face like she wanted to cry. “While you were sucking his dick, any chance you convinced him to see a doctor?”

“I checked his ribs,” Edward said. “He might have cracked one; he won’t go to the doctor about that.” He kept his hands across his chest when he wanted to hug her. 

“Are you staying much longer?”

“Do you want me to?”

Cristina tapped her finger against her hip, looking indecisive and angry about it, “yes.”

“Then I’ll stay.” 

\--

It was evening again before he made it back to the hotel. Mary met him at the pool while he watched his children try to organize a game of Marco Polo with a cluster of kids that couldn’t leave the shallow half of the pool. 

“I called Anne,” Mary said. She dropped her towel on the chair next to his but invited herself to sit on his lap rather than on her towel. He looped an arm around her back so she didn’t fall backward and she pushed his hair away from his face. “Since it appears we’re staying longer than predicted, she’ll be arriving on a flight tomorrow morning.” 

“Who told?” he asked.

“Cristina let me know that she asked you to stay and said we could occupy her guest rooms if we would prefer that over the hotel. Your daughter called me to tell me that your family needed a therapist and a professional mediator.” She pulled her legs up and leaned back against his chest, so she was lying over his body. Her hands pulled him by the wrists so his hands were laying on her belly. They watched the kids in the pool, Haytham looking impatient while he explained the rules again and Jenny getting pink with sunburn (or irritation). “We should stay at the hotel,” Mary said.

“Because of the pool?” Edward asked.

“No,” she said. “Because Anne and I decided we want your body, and if you’re in his house, he’ll have precedence.”

That didn’t sound _exactly_ like the truth but Edward’s hands meandered ever so slightly lower, working his fingertips under the waistband of her shorts while she tipped her head to smile at him like all kinds of dirty promises. “Why is it you don’t care about my dick until someone else does?”

Mary shifted sideways so she could see him better and his hand slid farther into her shorts. Not far enough to be indecent, precisely, but definitely skirting the line. “Why is it you wait for her permission but not ours?” That wasn’t the problem or they would have been having screaming matches for years. She licked her lips and said, “Federico is a maelstrom when he’s hurt, Kenyway. We’re here to see that you get out alive.” She kissed him then, with her fingers spread across his old, wrinkled cheek. “But I did promise Anne we’d have sex when she got here.” 

“Of course she did.”

“Mm,” Mary mumbled when she kissed him again. “We’re virile women in our prime.” 

“Dad,” Haytham shouted from the edge of the pool. “ _Gross_ ,” he looked _fed up_ with his head shaking and water pouring off his skinny limbs. “Weren’t we going to get food?” He didn’t wait for an answer but grab his towel and go to sulk on a chair as far removed from them as possible.

\--

Calvin was a bastard, wandering in and out of spells of liquor. 

On good days, he was an old man with a benevolent smile, making crepes he’d learned to cook in France. “Those were good days,” he said at the stove with a shake in his hands that never stopped. “All boys should travel,” he said when he was feeling fair and fine. “It’s in our blood, we have to get out and find our place in the world. You just wait, Edward. There’s a world out there.” 

Edward was fourteen with an indistinct jaw and long hair, sitting on the island in the kitchen, eating berries out of a plastic container, saying stupid things like: “what was your favorite place to go?” like they were _friends_. 

But Calvin was a drunk in the afternoons, sitting in the rose bushes that his wife had planted, with his skin-and-bones arm across Edward’s shoulders and his slick-wet breath saying, “you’ve got to pick them young, Edward. That’s important. A woman’s no good once she’s grown. That’s the way it was always supposed to be. You get them when they’re young, like a thoroughbred and you break them. You’ve got to get them when they’re young.”

He was _fourteen_ and disgusted, but Calvin had his arm curled around Edward’s neck like a noose, just holding him there so he wouldn’t miss-a-minute of wisdom.

I happened once (and _only_ once) at night, when Calvin cornered him in the hallway of the doghouse. He was all-but-liquid from drinking the whole day: stumbling around wearing his black khakis and his belt without a shirt, the rough patches of his dried-out skin and the bristle of his old-gray hairs grating like sandpaper when he penned Edward to the wall. The man was brittle and old, but his voice was steely-hard (and dripping scotch) when he said, “you look like your Mother, you know. She was pretty like her Mother, just like you. Pretty,” with his fingers in Edward’s hair. 

“I want to go bed,” was Edward’s plea for freedom, and Calvin’s answer was a wheezing-old-laugh, squeezed out of his barrel chest. The unwanted, crawl of his fingers down Edward’s face to rest like a loop around his neck. “I’ll put the music on for you. I just want to go to bed.”

The day (or days) after that, it was Phyllis, inviting herself into the house when the sky was dark, standing across the foyer from him. She looked at him like she knew _every_ secret that he was hiding but she never said a thing, not a single thing, except the day-after Calvin’s fingers found their way in Edward’s hair and his foggy breath whispered indecent endearments about how much he looked like his Mother. Phyllis said, “don’t be so kind to him, Edward. You’ve got what the rest of us didn’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Phyllis smiled but it was _pure fury_ , “I didn’t tell either,” she said as she pulled her gloves off and tucked them into her pockets. “Nod or shake your head. I’ll do the rest.”

Edward was fourteen and _scared_ , working around what he thought his Grandfather was really going to do when he was too-drunk-to-walk, but he was nodding his head along with Phyllis’ sharp-edged smile. 

“Go,” she said almost as soon as he’d done it. “Tell Peg to feed you.”

Edward spent a month in the mansion after that, hiding out in the staff apartments while Calvin spent a month in the hospital recuperating from an unfortunate fall down a flight of stairs. Edward never asked and Phyllis never answered; but all the same they were the only ones that knew the truth.

\--

Edward wasn’t awake or _asleep_ but floating along between the two, laying face-down on his bed with the blankets pulled up over his head. It was bad for his back (like most things were) but he couldn’t shake the habit. He came awake by degrees, the noticeable lack of a warmth Mary’s absence left in his bed, the drifting noise of the open balcony door: the glare of the light from the short hallway that connected the suite’s rooms.

Haytham’s voice, hushed but urgent, saying, “but you said Anne was coming. Anne doesn’t just _show up_. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” 

“Haytham,” Mary said.

“If something’s happening to Dad, you can’t leave me out.”

He didn’t hear it but he imagined that Mary was biting back a sigh that slipped out through her teeth. Her voice was gentle but immovable, she said, “nothing has happened to your Father, Haytham. Some things have happened and we want to make sure we’re here to support him if he needs us.”

“Anne doesn’t show up,” Haytham repeated. “Something _happened_! That whole family was shouting at one another yesterday and Jenny wouldn’t talk to me all day yesterday about what they were talking about and now _Anne_ is coming.”

Edward sat up as quietly as he could. He rubbed his neck where it hit his shoulder and thought about intervening, and he thought about leaving it, and he wasn’t sure which thing he was leaning toward before he got to his feet. Haytham was blocking the door to the balcony with his skinny body, hands on his hips and face tipped up to stare at Mary with open-ugly defiance. 

Mary was matching his stance perfectly, looking down at him saying, “I’ve already answered this question, Haytham.”

“Hey,” Edward said before it could escalate any higher. “Get dressed, let’s go to the beach.”

“I don’t want to go to the beach!” Haytham shouted.

Edward looked at his son, “go get dressed,” he said again (quieter), “we’ll go to the beach. Me and you. Go.” There was a promise in there that he couldn’t work out how to phrase but Haytham understood it well enough to stomp his way to his suitcase, muttering nothing but meanness under his breath. 

Mary pinched the bridge of her nose, “I’ve got to go pick up Anne. Jenny said she was meeting some friend for the day.” She pointed at the hallway, “what are you going to do?”

Edward shrugged. He was working up the energy to say something worthwhile and encouraging but Mary hugged him before he could squeeze any words out. He leaned his cheek against her hair and she didn’t say _anything_ but hang onto him. “We’ve gotten through worse than this,” he said. Then he kissed her hair and she pulled back to shake her head at him.

“Stay away from bars,” she said.

“Too early for bars to be open on the beach,” he answered. 

But she was _unconvinced_.

\--

Haytham sat next to him with his arms looked around his bony legs, glaring at the waves licking the shore. His knobby spine was sticking out of his curved back and his hair--thick and dark--was already damp with sweat from sitting in the sun. But he had dug himself into the spot, into the sullen silence, almost as soon as they got there. 

Edward laid out his towel and got comfortable with two arms behind his head and sunglasses to block the glare of the sun. He’d waited out enough tantrums to know the importance of patience. So he closed his eyes and he listened to the pull of the water across the sand; he listened to the mothers and their children, to the teenagers with loud-voices and big ideas. He hummed along with the music coming from somewhere just beyond sight, and waited for the lifeguards with their whistles.

“Do you think I won’t understand?” Haytham said (what felt like _hours_ later). He jerked his body sideways so the towel he had kept in his lap the whole time fell into the sand and his stick-thin legs were crossed in front of him. It was hurt, not anger, that made his face look so furious. 

Edward pushed his glasses off his eyes as he pulled himself to sitting up. “I think you would understand what you could.”

“So you think I wouldn’t care,” Haytham said. (That’s what you got from raising a kid to always say what he was thinking; they always said the first thing they thought.) “There’s basically no other reason.”

There were several other reasons, just as obvious.

“You told us that if someone ever hurt us, we needed to tell you. You told us it didn’t matter if they just used words or if they hit us--we always had to tell you. _Dad_ , we had a whole _lecture series_ on how important it was to tell you if something happened to us!” Haytham waved his hand at him in a circle, drawing an outline around Edward’s whole body. “Something happened, so tell me what it was.”

“You’re a good kid,” Edward said.

“ _Dad_ ,” was utterly fed up with him.

“I’m not ready to tell you.” That was the truth. “There’s a lot of things that I don’t think I’ll ever tell you. That’s not because you aren’t old enough to know them or because you wouldn’t care if I did. There are some things that I’ve seen, and some that I’ve done that I’d just rather you never knew about.”

Haytham’s face didn’t relax out of rage, but tilt toward regret. He pulled the towel back into his lap and dusted at the sand on it. “Was it one of them?” he asked. “One of your ‘cousins’,” he said the word like the very idea they were related had been a lie from the start.

“No,” Edward said. 

“So it was that woman?” Haytham said. He hesitated a half-breath, “Mama Maria? She was at _Uncle_ Desmond’s wedding, right? And was she the lady from the first wedding?” He’d been four-almost-five when that wedding happened, and he’d never mentioned it again after he related all the things he’d seen to his sister seven-almost-eight years ago. There was no guessing if he had forgotten it or not until then. “She’s Federico’s Mom. Did she do it?”

“Haytham,” he said again.

“Was it bad?” he asked instead. 

Edward nodded, like a compromise, and Haytham scowled at the towel and the sand and wind that went through his hair. “Sometimes, it’s just harder to put things back where they go. Mary’s being cautious. I’m fine.”

“Liar,” Haytham said. “I’m not going to hug you,” seemed unnecessary. “I mean, _here_. There’s girls and--other people.” He glanced around the beach like he’d just noticed the swell of the crowd. “Is she going to show up again?” Haytham asked. 

“Probably not,” Edward said.

“Good,” Haytham said. He stretched his legs out again. “But if you’re going to be spending ‘grown up time’” he said like he wasn’t aware that sex existed, “with Mary and Anne, you need to go to their room.”

“I’ll remember that,” Edward said. He turned his head so he was looking the same direction that Haytham was, looking for what he’d gotten his eyes stuck on. There was a gaggle of pretty girls under an umbrella not so far away. He fell back to laying down, “don’t embarrass yourself,” was his sole bit of advice. “If you can avoid it.”

Haytham scoffed at him. “I’m not _you_.”

\--

Edward met Mary when he was a stupid boy trying to drown himself; she was a full-grown woman looking for trouble. In those first days, bumping into one another across bars, she had been singular.

He was less of a man and she was more reckless, because one way or another he’d worked her clothes off after dark, up against a bar. She was unimpressed with him, even with her legs wrapped around his waist and her fingers digging into his shoulders. She was grinning at him in the moonlight, saying, “that’s the best you’ve got, Kenway?” 

Edward met Mary when he was looking for a way to die. 

She was there, sneaking up next to him at the bar when he was three-drinks past useful and she was smarter-and-sturdier, saying, “what’s your story, anyway? You don’t have anything better to do with yourself than this?”

Edward smiled at her the way Calvin smiled at him in the rose garden, (thinking, _you got to get them when they’re young_ ), and he said, “I’m employed full time as the family disgrace.”

Mary was unimpressed, fingers curled around a piece of paper or a straw or whatever bit of bar trash she’d been holding. “Does that come with benefits?” She didn’t laugh at him, or with him, or even smile, but kept right on looking at him (always unimpressed).

\--

Back at the hotel, Haytham fell asleep on the couch (waiting for a shower) and Edward left him there with a note explaining how he’d gone to see Anne and Mary. 

Anne was sleeping off hours on a plane, half-awake and making agreeable sounds when he invited himself to lay next to her on the bed. Her hands slid across his chest like searching for Mary’s breasts and when she found nothing but his unimpressive skin she hummed, “I guess you’ll work,” mostly to herself. It took her a minute, with her face pressed against his shirt and her leg across his body, to gain any kind of consciousness, and when she managed it, her fingers were dancing along the buttons of his shirt. “I heard you’re having a bad day,” she said.

“I’ve had better.”

“Mmm,” Anne agreed. Then she moved so her legs were spread across his hips and her hands were making craters in the mattress under his back. Her hair was long-long-long and falling like a curtain separating them from the world. “I don’t like your face when you’re sad,” she said. “You don’t have a good face for thinking.”

He rested his hands on her bare legs, let his palms drag up her skin to trace the line of her underwear down to the warm inside of her thigh. He was thinking about how her tank-top was pulled up off her belly and how beautiful she was--how easily, effortlessly beautiful she was. It was an easy, pretty thought. 

“Edward,” was the very-same start of worry that had been dogging him for two days, but her face wasn’t offering him her sincerest concerns. “I came here to fuck you, but if you’d rather talk about your feelings we can do that first.”

He flipped them over, she landed on her back with a high-pitched giggle and her legs wrapping around his body oh-so-easily. Her hands were pulling his shirt up so she could grope his chest when she kissed him. It was oh-so-perfectly easy to kiss her like they were all alone in the world with no bigger worries at all. 

“Where’s Mary?” was the only question he was concerned with. Anne let him go long enough to ask it and to pull his shirt off and throw it to the side. She was yanking his shorts off his hips, pushing them down until they got to his knees. 

Anne said, “being boring,” with a fake pout. She rolled onto her side to grab her phone while Edward stripped her and him out of their underwear. She was sending texts with one hand while she fisted his hair and pushed his head down between her thighs. “She said to stall.”

“This isn’t stalling,” he said. (But he wasn’t protesting either.)

\--

“I don’t see why we _have_ to go.” Anne had managed to drag herself out of bed (despite the jeg lag) and all the way to Edward’s hotel suite. She’d even managed clothing (a skirt, the same shirt she’d been wearing when he fucked her about an hour ago) but she hadn’t managed civility.

“We don’t _have_ to,” Edward countered.

“Don’t argue with her, she’s just whining,” Mary said. “We’ve been _invited_ to dinner.”

“Who is going to be there?” Jenny asked. “We just went to breakfast with them _yesterday_. We all know how that went.”

“Is this going to be like a casual dinner or is it going to be like when we _adjourn to the sitting room_ and have to have coffee and chocolate mints?” Anne flopped into the empty arm chair and crossed her legs at the knee. “What are they making?” she asked.

“Probably something Italian,” Haytham said. He was still knocking his knuckles against his eye, scrubbing sand or sleep or something out of it. “Isn’t that what they always make?” He had the note Edward left for him clenched up in his free hand but he hadn’t woken up until five minutes ago. 

“You don’t have to go,” Edward said. He was the last one still standing, the one with the phone in his hand and the invitation waiting for a reply in his recent messages.

Anne looked sideways at Mary, “no we’re going,” Anne said. “I just need to know what I should wear.” (Like underwear, for instance, underneath her skirt.) 

“I don’t think it matters,” Edward said.

“Yeah, Haytham’s worn the same shirt for three days and nobody’s said anything,” Jenny said. And it just devolved from there.

\--

Dinner had been pizza, served from the kitchen to the living room to the patio in the back. There were enough people to make the whole affair seem innocuous. Ezio had brought Sofia (and Leonardo) and Altair showed up with Claudia who brought her dogs that spent most of the time trying to steal food from the children.

Haytham must have sprained a muscle keeping himself from making snide comments about _authentic Italian pizza_ and Jenny spent the first twenty minutes side-eying every grown member of the family but they found conversations to make themselves a part of. Mary smiled politely when she was offered food and sat at the table with Cristina and Pietro, nibbling at food without making a commitment to eat it 

Anne was his fresh body guard, standing at his side (still wearing nothing under her skirt) laughing over something Ezio said. Edward had heard the story six-or-seven (or seventeen) times over already and there was nothing charming at all about the way Ezio told it. He only escaped by excusing himself to the bathroom that was not so far removed from the study.

He found Federico there, sitting in the big leather arm chair with Vittoria idly ripping a slice of pizza into bits before she stuffed them into her mouth. He was holding her plate in place with one hand and her cup in the other, doing nothing at all but watching her grind pizza to pulp. “I thought you would be my wife, or brother,” he sighed, “coming to ask me if I needed something.”

Edward sat on the footstool and smiled at Vittoria when she smiled at him. “No such luck,” he said. “I’ve got two lesbians, a teenager and Haytham.”

Federico snorted at that, “Mary called in reinforcements?”

“They’re worried,” Edward said. He reached over to pick up the book off the little round table--just to have something to do. He had assumed it would be some sort of novel, something moody and dense (and probably not in English) but it was a red-bound ledger full of Federico’s tiny numbers. “That shouldn’t be such a bad thing; to have people worried about you.”

“It’s exhausting.” Federico might have said more but his daughter had reached the end of her pizza and mumbled something at him (probably asked for more) and he sent her to go and get more (or just to leave). She slid off his lap, declined to take the plate but tucked her cup under her arm before she waved and Edward and left. “I’ve upset her the most,” he said once she was around the corner, “we have raised our children to be decorous when possible, and shouting and throwing chairs is not indoor behavior.”

“Well, I’m sure breaking lawn chairs and hiding in your study drinking doesn’t reassure her.” He threw the ledger back at Federico; he managed to catch it before it hit him (which was just as well, since Edward had forgotten about his ribs). 

“Have you been drinking?” Federico asked.

“Unfortunately not.”

That made Federico lean forward and throw the book up onto the table. He shifted forward so their knees were not so far away from one another. His ragged face was _exhausted_ , the darkness under his eyes just served to highlight the old break in his nose. There was a split in his lip and a bruise under the stubble on his jaw. “ _Fortunately_ ,” Federico said. “It is fortunate that you have not been drinking. You gave it up.”

A short knock interrupted them, Cristina smiled when she lingered in the doorway, “your daughter ratted you out,” she said. “I’ve stalled your brother by promising I’d ask you to join us. I imagine you have ten minutes, unless Sofia leaves the room.”

“Ask Leonardo about Michelangelo,” Federico said.

“Not even for you, my love,” Cristina said and then she was gone again. 

Edward may have asked why Leonardo had such entertaining thoughts on the matter but Federico just shook his head before the question could be asked. “Have you told Ezio?” Edward asked.

“That I’ve been drinking?” Federico asked. He seemed amused, “he seems aware.”

It seemed almost a shame to ruin that attempt at levity. “About us.”

“Ah. No.” Federico’s finger reached out to run across the back of Edward’s knuckles, all of his concentration seemed to drop that one little point of contact. It dragged on-and-on, turning the idea over in his head (worrying over old prejudices, and new injuries, and), “I had hoped to keep that secret indefinitely.”

“He won’t care if he hears it from you.” Edward pulled his hands back so Federico would look at his face, “he will care if your Mother tells him I raped you.”

Federico scoffed, sat back in the chair. “You _did not_. We have settled this.”

At very least, Federico had settled it. But he had given their secret away to his wife, and to Desmond, and said nothing when Altair knew, or when Jenny happened across them. He had been silent when Claudia worked it out on her own, or when it became obvious that Malik-and-Kadar had been informed or just observant enough to see it. Federico had lived all these years knowing his Mother knew, but he had never once broached the subject of telling his brother. “It’s settled as it can be,” Edward said, “unless your Mother tells it.”

Federico rubbed his fingers across his lips and stared him down. “You tell him,” he said. 

“No,” Edward said.

“Why?”

“Pick a reason,” Edward said, “because he was in the yard when I broke your face, because he grew up hearing about what trouble I was, because he still thinks I was put out because I tried to marry a hooker, because if you’re fucking me than you cheating on the first woman he loved--because he’d still believe your Mother over me.”

“I told him the hooker story,” Federico said with a smirk.

“Of course you did.”

“He’ll ask me why.” Federico just sighed.

Edward shrugged, “he’ll ask you if you’re gay.”

“He’s been having sex with a man for years, and still I do not even believe he understands what gay is.” That was enough to chuckle at, and Federico looked at him without hostility. “At the risk of being yet another person with good intentions that you must answer to, how are you?”

“I’m not drinking,” Edward said. “How are you?”

“I didn’t hit Ezio today.”

They were nodding at their achievements when Ezio invited himself into the study without so much as a knock. He was tapering off a good laugh that didn’t seem to sit squarely on his face, and coming to a dead stop not so far away from them. “You said you wouldn’t hide.”

Federico motioned his hand at Edward, “we have sex with each other.”

“Why?” was right on cue (and so openly, and _honestly_ confused that Edward thought he should have been offended), “When? Now? Are you gay?”

Federico stood up, smiling the way he only smiled at Ezio and clapped his hands on either of his brother’s shoulders. “Never change, Ezio.” 

“You are serious?” Ezio said. “Does Cristina know? Does she allow this?”

“Yes, I’m serious. She knows, and occasionally she allows it.” Federico slid his arm around Ezio’s shoulders and pulled him toward the door. “Let’s go and ask her about it.” He pushed his brother through the door. 

\--

Edward went to bed alone and woke up the next morning to find Anne with her back against the headboard and her legs crossed in front of her, reading (probably a book) on her tablet. Her fingers had a way of finding their way into his hair when she was in his bed, always combing through the reckless tangle of it, working out where it got knotted up with gentle-careful motions of her fingers. He rolled onto his side and put an arm across her legs, “what’re you reading?”

“The Time Traveller’s Wife,” she said.

“Good?”

Anne shrugged. Her fingers kept combing through his hair while he closed his eyes and snoozed as long as he could manage it. It wasn’t much like really sleeping, just drifting in and out of thoughts about what-happened-back-then and what was happening-right-now. He’d fallen asleep the night before listening to Mary and Jenny talk in the other room about what she needed to buy for college. The pretense of not being watched over was polite enough, but he was reasonably sure Mary was just there to make sure he didn’t jump off the balcony after dark.

(Which he’d done, more than once, back when they first met.)

“You know I love you,” Anne said. Her fingers brushed the hair away from his face, smoothed her thumb across his eyebrow (an odd habit of hers) before she tossed the tablet aside like it was nothing. “Right?”

“Yeah.” He shifted so he was leaning away from here, looking up at her face while she smiled at him, lazy and meandering to some kind of point. 

“We don’t mention that very often.” Anne slid down, her legs unfolding and slipping under the blankets with him. Her wandering hand went down to trace the outlines of his fading tattoos. “I really stayed for the money in the beginning.”

“I know.”

“Mary loved you.” Anne hooked her leg across his hip and her idle hand found a comfortable home rubbing her soft palm across his nipple as her soft-smile turned purposeful. “I liked the money, and I liked Mary. You were always fun but I didn’t always love you.” 

Since there was no reason not to, he worked his hand under her shirt. 

“I’m not good at this emotional support thing,” she said. (As if that were not obvious.) “But if you put your hand on my tit, you better be able to follow through.” And she stared him down with a smile like nothing-had-changed (not even a little) as he wiggled his hand up to press it even-and-sure across her breast. “I’m on top this time.” 

He rolled on his back and she shimmied her panties off before she climbed on top of him. 

“Oh,” she said when she almost kissed him. She tipped sideways to rifle through the blankets and held up a tin of mints. “I came prepared.”

\--

Edward spent the day being observed by his well-intentioned family, from Haytham who stared him down across the breakfast table, to Jenny who dragged him out for a little ‘shopping’ (which was really him paying for her to buy shirts nearly identical to shirts she already owned), to Mary who met him for lunch with nonspecific conversation topics like the weather and how they should find a good hotel near Jenny’s college in England until she was settled. 

Just before he was sure to end up at dinner, being scrutinized by good intentions, he got an invitation from Altair (and only him, no surprises) to meet him for dinner. 

They met up at a hole in the wall, the exact sort of place that Edward was reasonably sure Altair wouldn’t even have found his way too even with a map. It served all day greasy classics like burgers and fries, Edward ordered the first thing that didn’t sound like he’d have a heart-attack after the first bite, and watched Altair make faces at his phone. 

“Nice place,” he said three minutes into a shitty dinner date.

Altair glanced up long enough to look beyond the screen of his phone, “Malik said it has good reviews,” and since he managed to tear himself away he actually looked at the restaurant they were sitting in and then shrugged. “It’s...fine,” sounded like he’d dredged that word up from the bottom of his vocabulary. It was the start of an argument with his boyfriend, but Edward nodded in agreement. “Did you order?” Altair asked.

“Yes,” Edward said.

“Did I?”

“I told her to bring you a cheeseburger. You grunted that you didn’t like tomatoes,” but how had he missed the whole exchange, “you don’t remember?”

“No,” Altair set his phone face-down on the table and straightened up in his chair. It was easy to see why Cristina saw nothing spectacular in him. Removed of all circumstance and history, he was a semi-adult with no attention span and no clear indicators of psychotic tendencies. He had a customer-service smile set under his unforgiving stare. 

“I assume you invited me to tell me something,” Edward said.

“It was impulsive, I didn’t think it through,” Altair said. But also, “I just finished having a three hour long argument with Ezio and Claudia about how generous an allowance they should offer Maria and how she would perceive the number of zeros offered on her monthly check.” Every word sounded like he would rather have been boiled alive in oil than tolerate another minute of that same argument. “They are being unnecessarily kind.”

“That’s their Mother,” Edward said.

Altair rolled his eyes at that. “Twenty minutes of the argument was about whether or not they should tell her they are not interested in her apology because she hurt their brother--they just keep bringing it up. And then they do this thing where they look embarrassed and they’ll tack on ‘...and Desmond’, like an afterthought.” 

“For your benefit.”

“I’m aware,” Altair said. “They’ve decided to specifically mention that Desmond was abused for her benefit, and I am aware that they made that choice because I was there to observe them.” There was Phyllis’ living wrath, the toneless, emotionless quality of Altair’s voice reserving judgment on the lesser mortals. His whole face had smoothed out so his smile was all violence but he said, “I don’t know much about your history. Grandmother never spoke much of you, I was too young to have any reason to interact with you before you were exiled.”

“I wasn’t allowed near you,” Edward said.

“I’ve heard,” Altair said. His hand touched the napkin wrapped around the silverware while he thought out what he wanted to say next. While he didn’t sigh, it was evident from the way ran his tongue across his lips he didn’t know how to proceed. “The Auditores will always take care of the Auditores,” he said, he looked back at Edward’s face. “Ezio will send his Mother away, she will live out her days knowing he loves her and _everyone_ will be satisfied that the threat has been dealt with. Ezio will return to being the public face, Claudia will retire to doing whatever the hell she’s doing with Kadar and Federico will go on slowly becoming his father. They won’t ever talk about it again.”

“It’s not such a bad compromise,” Edward said.

“It’s not a good one,” Altair said. “I don’t know your history,” was a repeat of an earlier statement, “and I’m not asking you to tell me. It’s none of my business, but as I am contributing to the Maria Auditore retirement fund, I do have a certain amount of leverage in the exact terms of our settlement.”

Edward snorted, “you’re here to ask me if I want--” but he didn’t know how to phrase it.

“Justice?” Altair suggested.

But Edward had known Phyllis years longer than this boy, and he’d watched what she did to men that crossed her. “That’s not what it’s called,” he said. He took a drink of water (and wished it was something better) and set it down again. “I can’t imagine your boyfriend would approve.”

“Mama Maria has a one way ticket to Italy that has a convenient layover in New York,” Altair said. “I happen to know one or more persons who know how to keep secrets and have the motivation and morality to make an impression.”

It was funny (and it wasn’t) to him, how he’d ended up here again. At how Phyllis had raised her child, at how she’d poured all that dragon fire into his chest and sent him out into the world. He might never have had the interest or occasion to use it and that was what was _funny_. The gritty, dark kind of funny: how Mama Maria had created him. Altair was _just like_ his Grandmother and there was a short list of people in the whole of the world that mattered, and God help those that did them wrong. 

“If I say I don’t want that, will it stop you?” Edward asked.

Altair flattened his hand across the back of his phone as it vibrated against the tabletop. “It would be disappointing to some interested parties, but I would respect your wishes.” 

Edward rubbed his face and smiled at the waitress that showed up with their meals. Altair thanked her with a sincerest smile and winked at her because she was pretty (and used to men like him, winking at her). She asked after refilling drinks and left when they declined, so it was only them and the food between them waiting on an answer. 

“Malik would find out,” Edward said, “it’s taken me a few years but I’ve learned that much. The people you love always figure out your secrets. Desmond would find out.”

“I am not currently concerned with their reactions,” Altair said. “There’s been a lot said in the past three days about the worth of protecting Federico, and the relative emotional and financial expense of giving Mama Maria this generous retirement package. They view it as a humane execution; she’ll be removed from their lives with the empty promise that there is still room for reconciliation and Federico will be safe from his Mother’s manipulation.” He lifted the bun on his burger and frowned at whatever he saw in the meat and cheese. “I have made it clear that she is not allowed to touch my family. She wouldn’t try.” He looked up again. “The Auditores will always protect themselves.”

“So this is about protecting me?”

Altair shrugged. 

“It’s not worth it,” he said. 

“Yes, you are,” Altair said.

It must have been _easier_ to see people as things; to view the world without depth. There was black, and there was white, and there was no shadow to be seen. It would have been as easy as nodding his head (not so differently than how he had done it when Phyllis asked). There was definitely attractive aspects to the offer: the great wealth of old wounds that had been dragged to the surface. There was an animal sense of justice in the thought of Maria pushed in a corner and rendered powerless and scared. The longer he sat, the stranger that thought was. The woman was a monster of his childhood, and she had never (not once) ever been afraid. When he told stories to his children, the boogeyman had Maria’s face, but he’d never worked out how to defeat her. 

Altair didn’t look impatient as he glanced at his phone, but he frowned at it, “do you want more kids?” seemed out of place, he looked up again, “Maria, _my_ Maria has offered to have a child for us. I want kids. Malik thinks we’re too damaged to successfully raise a healthy child.” As if that were a truly ridiculous thought. 

“I can’t say I intended to have the first two,” Edward said. 

“If we could make a baby without female intervention, we’d have a dozen,” Altair said. He thumbed a reply back to (Malik, one assumed) and set the phone down again. 

Neither of them were eating, or even making the motion to bother. “How many kids do you want?”

Altair shrugged, “I’d be happy enough if I could convince Malik to contribute enough DNA to make one.”

“You don’t want one with your DNA?” Edward asked.

“My DNA comes from two parents that died before they turned thirty. According to Lamah, the majority of Malik’s family is healthy and alive. His Father being a noticeable exception. I like his odds of a healthy child better.” The phone buzzed again and Altair picked it up just long enough to silence it entirely. “If it makes it simpler for you to make a selfish decision, I’ll call him and ask him if he objects to my offer. I personally believe he would not object given the circumstance.”

“What would you do if you were me?” he asked.

Altair didn’t speak right away but narrow his eyes at him. He was perfectly still, barely even breathing noticeably, and then he ran his tongue across his lips again, “what I wasn’t allowed to do to William,” he said.

“Because you can?”

“If that’s all I cared about, I wouldn’t be asking permission.” But he considered it a pause, “because, you deserved much better than you got, Edward. You deserve more than to be a footnote in a cushy retirement plan.” He smiled, “Because, when I needed somewhere safe to figure things out, I found you. I see no reason that your safety should be compromised.” But also, “because when I took over your care from her, she said you were a humiliating punishment she was forced to bear.”

“I’m sure she felt that way,” Edward said. He sat back in his seat and pushed the plate away from him with the tips of his fingers. “This wouldn’t improve my situation.”

“That’s not really the point of it,” Altair said.

“It would give her ammunition to renegotiate her contract with her son.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, as primary financier of her retirement fund, I doubt she’ll find the renegotiation to her benefit.” Altair smiled (very charmingly) at the waitress worrying over their lack of appetite and he assured her they were working out a business arrangement. She was gone again with a backward glance (probably thinking she wasn’t getting a tip from them). “If Mama Maria did to your son what she did to you, what would you do?”

(Oh, but he would have _killed_ her with his bare-fucking hands.) “Nothing physical,” Edward said.

“I can promise _minimal_ physical,” Altair said.

“Nothing broken, she’s an old woman.”

Altair nodded. Then he picked up the bun on his sandwich again and frowned at the meat. When he turned around in the booth looking for the waitress she appeared instantly, he said, “could I change my order?” as if he hadn’t just secured Edward’s agreement to assault an old woman in an airport bathroom. 

When the waitress was gone again, Edward made a valiant effort to eat a fry, “so why did your Maria offer to have a kid for you?”

“Because I want one and she has good genetics,” he said. “Also a uterus.”

Edward snorted. “The lesbians were talking about having a baby a few months ago. We didn’t decide if we were for or against the idea. Haytham’s twelve, he’d probably hate a baby.”

\--

There was a long-standing _open_ invitation from Federico (and Cristina) for Edward to visit whenever he wished. He still called ahead, after he left Altair. His head was swimming with a mix of things: repulsive guilt, anxious glee, and fragile _hope_. He’d been nursing guilt for the things he’d done as long as he’d been alive, (first, and most often, thinking what he must have done to make his Mother leave). He could handle the uneasy anxiety of looking forward to Maria get what was coming to her.

It was the hope that got him; the way Altair had lingered at the end of their dinner date. His smile had been closest to sincere when he’d said, ‘you’re a good guy, Edward. It’s about time someone noticed.’ He hadn’t hugged Edward but it looked like he had thought about it. 

It was that hope, that vaguest sense of _belonging_ that ended with him on Federico’s back patio, sitting on one of his lawn chairs, waiting for the man himself. It knocked him off center, and he was left doing nothing but staring at his hands--all covered in scars.

“It’s late,” Federico said when he arrived wearing his old-man pajamas. He held out a tumbler with a finger of scotch sloshing in the bottom. He had his other hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle with two fingers slid into an empty cup. “This is all you get.” Edward took the cup so Federico could sit in the chair next to him, and he lowered himself into it slowly, maneuvering so he didn’t jostle his ribs. 

“You brought the bottle,” Edward said.

“That is because, unlike you, I have no aspirations of sobriety.” Federico opened the bottle and dropped the cap into the empty glass he sat on the table to his side. He crossed his legs at the ankle and leaned back into the seat. In the limited light of the backyard, he looked young and unburdened. “The lesbians would remove my testicles if I kicked you off the wagon.”

That was a good point. Edward swirled the scotch in the bottom of the cup. A smile quirked up at the edge of his mouth, “I’m not currently concerned with their reactions,” he said. Then he tipped the tumbler up and swallowed the mouthful of liquor in one go. 

“Altair?” Federico asked. He filled the cup when Edward held it out. 

“Yeah,” Edward agreed. He sipped at the scotch then, thinking over long-long days in his Grandfather’s study, sitting in those massive leather chairs, listening the music so loud it felt like it could vibrate him out of existence. Calvin liked cigars and old scotch, he fell asleep in the afternoon and Edward was as good as alone to sip his liquor and listen to that old-old jazz on scratchy old records. 

Federico drank to get drunk, sucking the liquor out of the bottle without care or caution. His face flushed up red when he was drinking. “What did the baby want?” he asked.

Edward had his legs spread open around the long seat of the lawn chair, one foot on either side, sitting forward while Federico was leaning back. He didn’t look at him, but out at the yard barely illuminated by the neighbor’s lights, and the dim-distant glow of the moon. “Permission to beat up your Mom in my name.”

Federico laughed, hoarse and deep and slow. “You going to let him do it?”

It seemed like he was; it seemed like he might even like the idea of it. Mama-fucking-Maria in a corner, scared for her life, with no way out. “Would you?”

Federico was tipping his head back, neck arched, smiling at his back, saying, “long live the king.”

Edward turned so his two feet were on the same side, leaning forward with his forearms across his knees, watching Federico drink like he was trying to drown. He swallowed half his own glass turning _that_ idea over, but his lips were all loose and friendly when he said, “Phyllis threw Calvin down a flight of stairs for me once.”

“I remember he fell down the stairs. Mother was wondering what he must have done.”

“I never told her,” Edward said. “She just looked at me. She told me not to be so kind to him.”

Federico’s smile faltered on his face, he curled his fist around the arm of the chair to pull himself up to sitting opposite Edward. “What did he do?” he asked.

Everything was getting swimmy around him, fading out of significance. It had been years (again) since the last time he drank anything and the boy he was at eighteen would be appalled at his old-man’s tolerance for drinking. He liked the way Federico’s face looked when it was angry-and-worried. “He said I looked like my Mother,” he said, “he was drunk and I was--I don’t know, young. He was so drunk,” that was important. “I don’t know what he was thinking.”

Federico was good about filling in the blanks, he tipped his head forward so their foreheads were rubbing together. His hand was wrapped around Edward’s wrist--loose but present. 

“We cannot let Altair become his Grandmother,” Edward said. “Someone’s got to get out of this shit, Federico.”

“Don’t worry about Altair, he’s got someone watching his back,” Federico said. His thumb was slow and gentle, rubbing up and down again on Edward’s arm. It went on-and-on, the two of them doing nothing at all but sharing the same damn space and then Federico tipped his head and kissed him. It wasn’t brash-and-dangerous the way it usually was. Or slow-and-purposeful the way it got to being whenever someone was watching. 

It was only a kiss, the sentiment of regret and hurt and _understanding_. Edward’s hand was cupped around Federico’s face inviting all kinds of disaster onto himself. But it was only a kiss.

\--

Edward woke up outside, on a lawn chair, with an empty bottle of scotch cradled in his arm. It was a little hand that woke him up, and Vittoria that was standing there in front of him with a tall glass of water, biting her lip as she regarded him. “You shouldn’t sleep outside,” she informed him. “There’s bears.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. He took the water and blinked himself into some sense of understanding of the world around him. Federico (who had been in the opposite chair last time Edward had his eyes open) was missing but Cristina was standing not so far behind her daughter with Pietro sitting on her hip. “Sorry,” he said to her.

Her smile was genuine: fond and forgiving, she said: “do you want some breakfast before you head home to your execution?”

“Uh,” he shoved himself to sitting up and nearly dropped the empty bottle in the process, just barely caught it before it could land on Vittoria’s little toes. His head was pounding and his back was screaming. “Yeah.”

“Come on,” she said. “We’re making waffles.” 

\--

“Oh she’s pissed,” Anne said when Edward let himself back into his hotel suite. His children were noticeably absent (as was Mary). Anne was reading her book on his couch, but she picked up her phone to send out the text that would call down the strike team before he even got the door closed. “That’s not the shirt you left in,” she said.

“I traded it for one that smelled better,” he said. His head was still _aching_ despite the water and the food and the pain medicine. “Do I have time for a shower?”

“Probably,” Anne said. And just when he turned to leave, she said, “you look better though. Whatever you did, did it help?”

Well he’d gone off and agreed to let his Aunt get assaulted and he got drunk and he slept outside, one or all or some of those things seemed to have settled his the riot of noise in his head. (It seemed all that was missing from his usual M.O. was fucking Federico and he’d probably have that checked off the list by the end of the week at the rate they were going.) “Yeah,” he said.

Anne smiled, “I’ll tell her, it might slow her down.”

“Probably not,” Edward said.

“Definitely not,” Anne agreed but she was typing out a message nonetheless. “Go, shower. Put your hair up. She likes your hair up.” She waved a hand at him as she pulled the tablet back into her lap. “Wear the nice cologne she bought you.”

Edward laughed at that. “It smells bad.”

“She likes it,” was non-committal (because the cologne did smell terrible), Anne was grinning to herself when she said, “not _everything_ is about you, Edward.”


End file.
